


Ash

by trash_devil



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kingmaker route, Naoya mentioned, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-24 00:01:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18158786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_devil/pseuds/trash_devil
Summary: He closed his eyes and forced another mouthful of ash down his throat.





	Ash

He was full of ash.

He swore that if he cut himself open, even his blood would be tainted with the powdery grey. Not that he needed to hypothesize; he had licked his own blood off the floor enough times now.

His body was still human enough to reject him pouring an inedible substance down his throat, but it had stopped fighting him around the twentieth time he reswallowed his vomit to keep every last particle inside him. 

His mouth, too, tasted of ash. 

It had tasted that way long before he actually started eating it, though. That was back when he was still Kazuya.

Then Kazuya fused with Bel and became him. 

They called him Abel for a long time, though deep down they probably knew that was no more accurate than calling him by any of his other old names: Belial or Jezebel or Beldr or…

He closed his eyes and forced another mouthful of ash down his throat.

He wondered if this was how the wolf felt after they had filled it with rocks as he pressed his hand against his abdomen, hard and heavy with ash-and-stomach-acid clay. He lifted himself to his feet slowly, clumsily, reluctantly.

“Two,” he said aloud. He rubbed at his eyes.

Two Cains. It didn’t sound like much, but two Cains equalled some two hundred something years. Two Cains that had died at 89 and 93, the period between his final reincarnation spanning at least a half-century. He hadn’t really bothered to count. Those Cains weighed in at 143 and 162 pounds, and, therefore, 305 cubic inches of ash, which became about 5 liters of Cain, cremated into jars. The average human stomach could hold a maximum of about 4 liters.

No wonder he felt sick. He swallowed back the bile rising in his throat.

“You swore you’d never leave me,” he growled at Cain’s ghost. 

At Cain and at Naoya and at that other man rebirthed from the last lingering remains of God’s power, whatever his name was. He couldn’t remember. 

It didn’t matter. That man had died, and Abel _(am i abel)_ realized that now he was truly alone. No one to come and guide him throughout the endless centuries of his immortal life. No one who knew who he had been or what he had liked or even knew he ever had a name at all.

And damned if he was going to let any scrap of the man escape him. He was full of Cain.

Kazuya, Abel, Ba’al, Belzaboul, Belberith… let out a sob as he dropped back to the concrete, curling around the hard lump of his stomach. Maybe he had always been alone. Maybe he was just a tool for Cain’s release, and, his role fulfilled, he was discarded like the garbage he was. 

Maybe Kazuya was just Cain’s way out. But Kazuya, that stupid, self-loathing, bitter human _(he never wanted to rule never wanted to be immortal never even wanted to live at all if he was to be honest)_ clung to Cain like he was the only thing in the world that mattered. And now it was only him and eternity and the demons nestled inside him. That were part of him. That were him. 

His head hurt.

No more Cain. 

Now it was just him and the humans that worshipped him, that hated him, that he slaughtered indiscriminately, Belial’s fire burning in his hands and Jezebel’s flowers blooming at his feet and Belzaboul’s eggs implanted in their corpses.

He was alone, and it wasn’t fair that they weren’t. It wasn’t fair how humans could forge bonds in the worst of times. It wasn’t fair how they could band together into something greater than themselves.

It wasn’t. He’d kill them all.

… But then they’d be together in death, wouldn’t they?


End file.
